EDITORS—Joti tracks the reasons for the Dems’ recent embarrassing defeat at the polls, and the UK Laborites’ dismal performance.
TOPICS: UK/US working class apathy and alienation from the political establishment and taking part in elections, a fact that worries the ruling elites as elections serve to legitimate their rule. • Trump’s MAGA people may represent the last contingent of true believers in the US promise of an actual popular democracy, notes • Joti describes in detail how WOKISM (identity politics) is nothing but a shameless ruling class tactic to disarm the working class by introducing issues that serve to divide it, while presenting the state (in the hands of one or another wing of the plutocracy) as their saviours. Insofar as identity politics replaces the actual class struggle, in which economic factors play the preponderant part, it buries the possibilities for revolutionary social change. This is seen in issue after issue. Radical bourgeois feminists, for example, taught women in the 1980s that their “natural” enemy was men, not the ruling elites. Bourgeois feminism ended up subverting women’s power. • Same with the “woke” anti-racist movement. Capitalism, in fact, needs racism; it is one of the ideologies fuelling and justifying colonialism and the ruthless expropriation of people around the globe, often using racist imperial soldiers who come from the exploiting country’s working class.
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INDRAJIT—Western media talks about how ‘democracy is losing all over the world’ but what’s really happening is the democracy illusion is falling apart. Liberal democracy was a Trojan Horse we let into our countries, and bankers bust out and ransacked the place. Aristotle said representative democracy trended towards oligarchy and, whaddya know, it does.
If you read Aristotle, there are many species of democracy, he listed dozens of forms across just the Med, each suited to the population. America peddled the audacious illusion that there was one form of democracy, and that it fit neatly into bombs. This is philosophically nonsensical, but politically potent, a modern monotheism for the godless. One ring to rule them all. But this Democracy™ was always an illusion. America was always shit and what it was peddling was always bullshit. Now the stench is simply too much.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—If you understand the truth that modern Israel is a settler-colonialist project of the western empire which uses the Jewish religion as an excuse to inflict violence and tyranny in a crucial geostrategic region, then you understand that there’s no real connection between modern Israel and the Jews you encounter in your community. Sure a majority of western Jews buy into the empire’s lies and support Israel, but a majority of the westerners of all faiths buy into the empire’s lies about its wars and official enemies and all its other propaganda too. This is just what it looks like when you live in a highly propagandized society which is structured to psychologically manipulate people into consenting to nonstop military violence.
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EDITOR—Trump’s former Iran envoy at the State Department, Brian Hook, is reportedly coordinating the transition at State. That suggests that Hook could serve in a top position at the department, and it signals that Iran policy will be once again dominated by the hawks in Trump’s orbit. Iran hawks in Washington have been very pleased with the news of Hook’s involvement in the transition. Mark Dubowitz, president of the hardline, anti-Iranian think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and prominent supporter of the “maximum pressure” campaign, said, “I couldn’t think of a better person to lead the transition team given Brian’s experience in senior roles at the State Department.”
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JIM KAVANAGH—Please note another important element of the different proposals that will be put forth in this situation: The most difficult demand from the Russian side, which almost requires them to move on Kiev, is the call for “de-Nazification.” It’s the demand that will be most resisted as “political interference,” since it does, indeed, require “regime change” in the deepest sense. I’ve said before how nearly impossible it will be in western Ukraine, where fascistic, Banderite ideology is entwined in Ukrainian nationalism, has deep historical roots, and has become ascendant since 2014. But here’s the thing: No matter how impossible it is, it’s necessary—for the American ceasefire plan as well as for the Russian project.
